Holiday Gift Guide: Corporations You Can Get Behind

With the holidays just around the corner, gifting season is upon us. For those looking to support businesses with a social and environmental impact, it can be difficult to decide where to shop.

B Corporation certification shines a light on the companies leading the global movement of business as a force for good. Individually, B Corps meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability, and aspire to use the power of markets to solve social and environmental problems.

Today, over 2000 corporations worldwide are recognized for their exceptional social and environmental impact. We’ve selected some amazing B Corporation certified businesses that you can feel good supporting this holiday season and beyond.

The Lucky Iron Fish is a safe, effective, easy to use solution for iron deficiency. It is simply a piece of iron that you use in the cooking process that releases a significant portion of your daily-required iron intake and is reusable for up to five years. The iron cooking tool is shaped like a fish, a symbol for luck in Cambodia which is the country that inspired this health innovation.

Impact is an important part of the Lucky Iron Fish ethos, which is why it is incorporated into everything we do. It’s not just our end product improving lives, but our entire business model. We are continually striving to act in a socially and environmentally responsible way; such as hiring local staff, using recycled and biodegradable materials, and supporting like-minded businesses and organizations. We also provide nutrition education and support in the villages where we work.

The Lucky Iron Fish operates with a Buy One Give One policy, which ensures for every Lucky Iron Fish purchased, we donate one to a family in need for free. It’s our vision to improve the health and wealth of our communities. That’s why by 2020, it's our goal to have distributed one million fish to one million families in need all over the world.

For Patagonia, a love of wild and beautiful places demands participation in the fight to save them, and to help reverse the steep decline in the overall environmental health of our planet. Patagonia donates time, services and at least 1% of sales to hundreds of grassroots environmental groups all over the world who work to help reverse the tide. Their goal is to build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Patagonia knows that their business activity – from lighting stores to dyeing shirts – creates pollution as a by-product. They work steadily to reduce those harms using recycled polyester in many of their clothes and only organic, rather than pesticide-intensive, cotton. Staying true to their core values during thirty-plus years in business has helped them create a company they’re proud to run and work for.

CAUSEBOX exists to help bridge a knowledge gap between socially conscious brands and consumers. There are scores of companies making products responsibly and using commerce to empower — but without a widely recognized tastemaker, marketplace, or vetting agent, these companies are remarkably difficult to find. CAUSEBOX curates, vets, and validates socially conscious companies — and delivers their products with high value and convenience.Each season, the CAUSEBOX team curates a limited edition box filled with products doing good, empowering artisans, and saving the environment. Every product has a story–and those stories of impact and change are told in a seasonal magazine (included in every CAUSEBOX), called Good News.

CAUSEBOX aims to be at the forefront of a shift in consumer behavior and believes that consumers will continue to demand more and more from the products and companies they support. CAUSEBOX’s hope is to connect a world of suppliers and consumers—to equip consumers with information about how their purchases matter, and to ensure that those purchases have positive impact on the world.

In 2013, Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company became the very first Canadian B Corp brewery. The family-run brewery takes pride in creating unique, wonderful, and certified organic craft beer, conceived with honest consideration for the environment and local communities, and delivered with a sense of friendly relationship. Beau’s All Natural makes a variety of world-class, award-winning craft beer, including its flagship, Lug Tread Lagered Ale, using certified organic ingredients and local spring water. They run on the belief that beer tastes better when you can feel good about drinking it.Beau’s is a proud environmental steward and leader in sustainable craft brewing who became the first craft brewery in Canada to choose 100% green energy for both electricity and natural gas needs. The brewery is one of only a few in North America using beer labels made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper. Their innovative, award-winning 4-pack of beer features 17.3% more beer yet uses fewer bottles, caps and labels and less box than an average 6-pack. Beau’s has worked hard to achieve the goal of reducing their energy consumption by 50% over the last three years.All Beau’s beers are made with certified organic malt and hops, and local spring water. Beau’s has implemented a purchasing policy that favours local suppliers, those with good environmental track records, and who treat their employees fairly and with respect. Beau’s has shown a commitment to working with local organic farmers to rebuild the legacy of hop farming in the local region, and now has one local hop farm that grows exclusively for Beau’s.

tentree is a environmentally progressive, lifestyle apparel brand that plants ten trees for every item purchased. tentree was founded on the premise that every consumer wants to know that they are contributing to the wellbeing of our planet. They believe that they can inspire a new group of consumers to tackle the environmental issues we are now faced with head on, positively impacting our future. They work with a variety of not-for-profits, educational groups, and organizations across the globe to ensure that their planting efforts are having a real, marked impact in the local communities. To date, they have already planted well over 10 million trees and aim to double that number within a year.With millions of trees planted to date, the impact is easy to see. These trees have provided hundreds of thousands of days of employment in underprivileged communities across the globe which equates to several hundred full-time jobs. Not to mention the countless hours of education that have gone into making these projects a success. The environmental impact is truly astounding as these trees help rejuvenate damaged eco-systems and remove pollution from the atmosphere. With every purchase this impact grows.

Lunapads is a mission-based women-owned enterprise based in Vancouver, Canada. Since 1993 they have been dedicated to creating healthy, body-positive and eco-friendly personal care products. Lunapads' products are used by customers in over 40 countries worldwide. Thanks to their choices, over 1 million disposable pads and tampons are diverted from landfills every month.

Lunapads mission is “to create a more positive and informed relationship between individuals, their bodies and the Earth.” Lunapads believes in embracing your body and rejects the culture of shame and silence around menstruation and other bodily functions. By manufacturing and promoting healthy and sustainable personal care products, Lunapads has pioneered the natural feminine care category for over two decades and proven that business can have a profound positive impact for its community.Lunapads supports girls and women globally. In the developing world, many girls and women lack access to sanitary products for their monthly needs. The impact of this largely unreported issue is devastating, resulting in school absenteeism and dropout, teen pregnancy, increased risk of maternal mortality and reduced or lost income opportunities. Through the company’s One4Her and Pads4Girls programs, low-cost washable pads and underwear are provided to girls and women in need in the developing world. Finally, as shareholders in a Ugandan social enterprise, Lunapads is directly invested in a business model which supports locally-based pad making, employment and distribution.

Kotn was born from a desire for good quality, simple essentials that didn’t cost a fortune. The essentials are the things you can’t live without, the basics at the core of everyday moments. At Kotn, they work to elevate the clothes you spend your life wearing, and so reimagine your most ordinary utilities.

By working directly with cotton farming families in Egypt, Kotn wants to rebuild the industry from the inside. They make their own fabrics from raw cotton bought direct from farmers at guaranteed prices. Their model is like farm-to-table, but for your clothes. The cotton is then sent to their own cut-and-sew factory outside Alexandria. The responsibly-run operation employs locals, securing their craft and their livelihood. By scrapping the middleman, they’ve ensured a fair wage for them, and an honest price for you.

To slow the cycle of child labour, they’ve also partnered with pro-literacy organizations on the ground in the Nile Delta. Kotn is now organizing a fund that builds schools in these rural farming regions. Improving the literacy rate for boys and girls in Egypt will help to improve quality of life for the next generation.

“Businesses have a responsibility in solving some of the world’s most greatest challenges. The B-Corp movement is critical for the success of this movement. Lucky Iron Fish Enterprise is proud to be one of 2000 organizations striving to do well, by doing good.” - Gavin Armstrong, CEO Lucky Iron Fish Enterprise